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I have an Acer netbook with a bad hard drive – or one that needs to recovered. So I took the hard drive from a broken laptop and put it into the Acer. It says it has three days to activate or it will automatically activate and install Service Pack 3. I have a product key with numbers.

Is that new hard drive ready to activate? Because if so, I would like to keep it for one of my other laptops that only has XP on it, and I can just buy a new hard drive and use the product key that's on the bottom of the Acer netbook. The Acer had Windows Starter; the new hard drive has Home Premium and I would like to keep it.

I'm thinking that it might never have been activated. Why would it say that I only have three days left to activate or activate automatically?

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You can re-use a Windows product key for a new Windows installation.

During the activation process, you'll have an option to call Microsoft's automated activation service. Provide the Installation ID shown on screen, and the service will return an activation code.

I assume you have keys for both Windows 7 Starter on the bottom of your netbook, and Windows 7 Home Premium from the broken laptop?

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  • yeah just wasnt for sure about useing on a different laptop.Does that matter.
    – dan
    Jan 28, 2014 at 8:01
  • ok the netbook dont have the key on the bottom.so where is the key hidden in computer?can i find it in bios?i think i can use old hard drive just needs redone.how do i find the key on it?
    – dan
    Jan 28, 2014 at 8:05
  • You can use [Magical Jellybean]( magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder) to locate the product key. You can use it on a different notebook, just don't tell Microsoft during the phone activation.
    – disposedtrolley
    Jan 28, 2014 at 8:18
  • hey thank.will i need any special tools or just a computer?
    – dan
    Jan 28, 2014 at 8:47
  • Just the computer.
    – disposedtrolley
    Jan 28, 2014 at 9:10

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